257. How to Earn $5M/Year Selling Chicken Coops

0:00UpFlip Podcast Host:Matt DuBoise built his first chicken coop with scrap wood he found in a dumpster. When he listed on Craigslist for$225, it sold in less than 30 minutes. That simple sale eventually became Carolina Coops, a seven-figure business with customers around the world. I'm Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to the Outfit Podcast where we give actual advice for you to start your next business or grow your current one. Today, Matt is breaking down how he discovered an overlooked market, built a premium product, found his first customers, and grew an unusual idea into a thriving company. So excited to welcome Matt to the podcast today.

0:35UpFlip Podcast Host:Matt, thank you so much for being here. Brian, thank you for having me.

0:37Matt DuBoise:This is one of my favorite things to talk about.

0:39UpFlip Podcast Host:Well, I'm excited to talk about it with you here. But before we do that, let's kind of like the framework of who Matt is and what you exactly do. Give us a high level about your business.

0:48Matt DuBoise:Well, okay. So who I am, I mean, I'm the president founder of Carolina Coops, but I am just your typical American. One of the things I love to kind of brag about is I'm not very smart. I barely made it out of high school. And I love to share that story with people because I've learned now after 20 years being in business, starting from nothing. Okay. Literally start out of a dumpster, started with that$225 coup that you just mentioned. You know, when we start to talk about entrepreneurship, it doesn't mean that you have to have all brains and be book smart. Like everything I was taught when I was a kid.

1:18Matt DuBoise:I mean, you're a lot younger than me, but I can tell you when I was a little kid, if you weren't smart and didn't go to college and this and that, you were not going to succeed. And I like to tell people it's flipped. It's the opposite. Okay. And so that's who I am. I'm a dreamer. I'm an entrepreneur. I love solving problems. And I never knew in a million years, I was going to grow up building chicken coops for the world, but I have built animal enclosure since I was a kid. I just, it's a gift from God that it's just so easy for me to do. And, you know, we started from nothing and now here we are almost 20 years later, sending coops all around this planet.

1:50UpFlip Podcast Host:So, so crazy. And so take us back to your first chicken coop. You built this from scrap for wood from what I've seen here. So take us back to that founding story about the very first chicken coop for your team.

1:59Matt DuBoise:Yeah. So, I mean, I moved to Durham from upstate New York, got out of the communist state of New York back in 2008. And that's when I found out about the good old boy club down in South. I now can understand why Southerners do not like Yankees. I don't blame them one bit, but I fell on hard times. And so did my wife. She was the breadwinner. She was a bartender, made a ton of money when we're up in New York. She But I bought my first house in Durham, North Carolina. I had a quarter acre and I always wanted a couple of chickens. And that started from a story back when I was in fifth grade, when I hatched baby chicks in class and whatever.

2:26Matt DuBoise:As an exterminator, I'm going around all these different places and there's still, you know, construction going on, even though it's, you know, the great recession. And I noticed there's a bunch of building materials inside the dumpsters. So I started pulling the material out saying, I want to build my first chicken coop and I don't have any money to go buy materials. I'm going to use this stuff. Right. So that's what I did. And I'll never forget when I was building it, you know, this little two foot by four foot box, I decided to make it really, really nice, which is not normal back then for chicken coops.

2:50Matt DuBoise:And I just remember saying, screw it. Why not make it nice? And so I built it, got a couple of chickens, fell in love with it. That's where the very real disease about backyard chickens is chicken math. So I wanted to get more chickens. And basically, you know, I started to build a bigger coop and something that a lot of people don't understand when you're building out of a dumpster, you don't go in with a plan in your head. The materials tell you what the plan is. So the second coop I found this old shed and the roof was still good, but the walls were crap So the roof dictated how big the coop was going to be I ended up taking my little coop put it on craigslist sold it in like under half an hour And I remember telling the lady I was like, do you really realize this is a chicken coop?

3:27Matt DuBoise:She's like, oh, yeah, this is a big thing So, um, I left the post up to see if I couldn't make more money and I had a lady call and she's like, well, you know I'm, sorry, you sold it, but I wanted a bigger coop anyway So I sent her a picture of the bigger coop I was building and she goes, oh, I love that and I sold that for two thousand dollars and honestly, I couldn't tell you my coop after that.

3:45UpFlip Podcast Host:Oh my gosh, that's my coop after that. I love that. That is, wait, that is so crazy. So in a matter of like your very first two sales,

3:51Matt DuBoise:you sold that for like two grand, you said like 20? Oh yeah, yeah, you talk about growth.

3:56UpFlip Podcast Host:Yeah, I was gonna say, oh my gosh. Yeah, that is growth in the right way. So what was that telling you like in your head? You're like, okay, like this is like a legit business. I'm gonna like really try and go after or is like, there's still some hesitancies of like, oh, maybe I should get into business.

4:07Matt DuBoise:Oh my God, the hesitance, the hesitancies is unreal. And that's something I, I, I haven't gone back in my mind a lot because I'll be honest with you. There's a lot of trauma. There's a lot of heartache. I mean, nearly killed me. It caused permanent damage for me as a CEO, the hardships I went through. I can tell you in hindsight, I'm thankful for every single one because I didn't realize back then it was teaching me what I needed to learn for today to survive as an entrepreneur, to take it to the next level. But I couldn't believe I never seen$2 ,000 in my life. I couldn't believe I got a lady say yes.

4:37Matt DuBoise:like that within a second. I don't remember how the hell I came up with$2 ,000. It's just, I went with my gut and she said yes. And it's just from there again, I was just an absolute shock that we sold it so quickly for so much.

4:49UpFlip Podcast Host:Tell us more about the hardships and like the lessons like entrepreneurs have to go through. I always say, because I have my own business and stuff and it's like the hardships suck. Like there's been moments where I've had like multiple quarters back to back where I was like, this is the valleys of valleys. I'm at like ground rock right here. Like there's nothing that's going to beat this. Like this sucks. Looking back on it, It was like a phenomenal experience because I learned so much. Talk to us more about that and like the lessons entrepreneurs have to go through to be able to grow their business.

5:13Matt DuBoise:Absolutely. Now in hindsight, okay, I wanna paint the picture. When I started, I had nobody in the beginning to tell me what to do, how to do it. I had nothing, right? So I had to learn this the hard way, but I had no choice. I had to survive, okay? I didn't go borrow money, which is, in my opinion, the biggest mistake when you're starting a business. I had to really fight. And I didn't realize until now that that was a good thing. But the hardships, I went through thinking I was the only one. After talking to other entrepreneurs, everyone goes through it. But what I've realized, and I tell people that are going through it today, is if you're not going through hardships, you're not trying hard enough.

5:43Matt DuBoise:You're not even close. You're not an entrepreneur. If you're not pushing it to the limit, you're not an entrepreneur. You're not gonna survive. And one of them that really pissed me off when people come to me like, oh man, I wanna get some advice. I wanna start this business. I wanna be rolling in the money. I said, you already failed. You're not an entrepreneur. We don't do this because we wanna roll in the money. We do this because we have this dream of someone choosing our solution. That's my paycheck. And I don't care if it's a bag of bedding that we sell for 40 bucks or if it's a$40 ,000 Jinkoo.

6:09Matt DuBoise:Every single sale is what excites me, is what really gets me going. But I would tell people, and I tell people this all the time, especially the ones that are just starting out, which is the most important part. It's just like when a woman becomes pregnant, the most critical part is when that baby's in the womb. That's what happens when you're first starting the business. That is what's going to determine the outcome of your business. And those hardships are critical. They are meant for you to go through it. And I promise you, if you are not going through hardships, you're on the wrong path. You're not trying hard enough.

6:36Matt DuBoise:You know, and I love to explain to people that it's, there is no secret to starting a business. You just got to always be willing. A lot of people work hard. A lot of people like, oh man, I'm working hard and I just can't get there. You know, there's a lot of people that are working hard, but what an entrepreneur does, we dream harder than we're actually working. If you're not falling into those hardships, you're not dreaming hard enough. I can tell you, I mean, this is kind of embarrassing, but I mean, there's times I just want to end my life. I want to end it all. Like the amount of stress that I was under was insane.

7:03Matt DuBoise:And it was because of what I was going through, not realizing I had to go through it to learn it. But thank God I was never going to have a temporary problem become a permanent solution, you know? And thank God I fought through it. Thank God I had my wife. That's a huge secret to my success is if you do not have that right person at home, you're screwed. It's already hard enough to start a business, but if you don't have that, the real work happens when you get home. Yeah. The truth be told. So thank God I had that. But you got to go through the hardships. I don't want to bore you with all the ones I went through, but they're there and honor them and brace the hardships.

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8:11UpFlip Podcast Host:I kind of want to keep going down this track from like zero to five employees, whatever, five to 10, 10 to 20, now 20 to 30 here. That's where you're currently at. Of all like those stages of growth, the question is like, should it be hard the whole time? Or should it be like plateaus of like, this was really hard. I figured it out. The neck, this year is easy. Next year's hard.

8:29Matt DuBoise:100%. That was my post this morning. I love to share some thoughts on my LinkedIn and what I've realized now, and I'm so lucky, and this is huge advice for people thinking about starting their own business or if they're well into it and you find yourself hitting those plateaus, go and talk to as many other business founders as possible. Okay. And notice I say business founders because that's the unique breed. Those are the ones that is where the real magic is. That's where you're really going to learn a lot. And I'm so fortunate to have a mentor recently. His name's Jeremy. He has a very similar story to me from Murphy door.

9:04Matt DuBoise:Some people may have heard of him, but long story short, I went and met with him and him and I hit it off right away. And he explained to me, I talked about those hardships. I was like, is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Like, when does this get better? He goes, it doesn't. It's a circle of problems. The problems just get bigger. The problems cost more, but they come in a cycle. And I was like, you're right. Cause I've gone through these cycles, not realizing it. And they always happen one after another, where the first one's like your processes, then it's going to be capital problems.

9:27Matt DuBoise:Then it's going to be people problems. Then it's going to be you problems. Like I become a huge problem and I got to learn to grow. I got to learn, I got to change my head. I got to learn what my real job is. So I would say what happens after time, at least for me, when you can start to recognize that cycle, it doesn't feel as hard, but you're prepared for it. You know, not to panic, like the ship's going to sink. You know what you got to do to get through it. And I would now say, if things are not hard, you're not trying hard enough. That it should always be hard. There should always be things that are challenging you.

10:00Matt DuBoise:Because if you don't, you're going to get fat and lazy and you're going to be out of business.

10:02UpFlip Podcast Host:One part that stood out to me of like those cycles is you become the problem. I think that's a great tidbit right there. And you're always like having to change yourself and like evolve yourself. Tell us more about that. I think that is a really interesting and I 100 % agree. Like as an entrepreneur, you always need to be like changing yourself. So how do you become the problem? How do you recognize that?

10:21Matt DuBoise:So I'm going to give you a quick story. And this is going to be really hard for me because I just went through this the hardest ever for myself recently. And this is such an important message and an invaluable lesson I've learned. For me, I became the problem because this business is my baby. Unless you have kids, you're not going to understand. But let's say you're a parent, you have a kid. Let's say, okay, you got your favorite dog. Maybe most people can relate to that. Picture someone who goes up and slaps your child. Someone goes up and kicks your dog. That's the rage and anger you feel as a business founder and it's hard to know how to manage that And especially when you're pushing it and I know when I bought this building, which is a huge factory Now it's been part of my dream so we can build the coops faster and you know And a great price I went through a very hard moment finding out what it's like to really find out who people are when they're in charge of departments And they want to sabotage part of your business My wife who's our cfo was drugged by my assistant twice Like you would not believe what goes on and those hardships and you got to figure out what you're going through.

11:16Matt DuBoise:But I had to learn my anger was out of control. I tell people now go read my Glassdoor reviews. Like I deserve 90 % of it. 10 % is a lie. But I was like, this is not doing me any good. And I just I had to learn a lot. And then one of the things, again, from talking to other founders, other business owners, and this also, again, I got to give Jeremy props. I'm not trying to plug his business or anything like that. But that's how recent this was for me. Putting things in perspective is very, very important. And he put something in perspective crystal clear for me when I was telling him about my people problems.

11:49Matt DuBoise:And he said the same thing. He's like, he had anger problems and this and that. He said, Matt, you got to realize, I want to get this right. He goes, your employees 100 is your 80. And I never thought about that. And what he was saying to me, he goes, Matt, if you know you're getting 100 % out of your people, how can you expect more? They're never going to care like a business founder would. And my father, you always told me that. I was like, no way.

12:09UpFlip Podcast Host:Why aren't we all on the same board? Why aren't we going after 100 miles an hour? Blah, blah, blah, blah.

12:12Matt DuBoise:And I'm finally realizing I was wrong. And at the end of the day, when you're in charge of a business, it all falls on you. You're the captain of the ship. And the other thing about, you know, I like to talk about perspective, our ship got bigger. And when your ship gets bigger, you have to understand it takes longer to turn it when you got to navigate and pivot. And you always got to navigate and pivot, but it's going to take a little bit longer. So you got to understand the real process. And going back to, I started to talk to, I didn't know this was possible. a counselor for CEO anger management.

12:42Matt DuBoise:This is specifically what she does. And I was so happy to find out I wasn't alone. And what happened was the hardships that I did go through that I'm thankful for at the beginning of this business. It's a PTSD. It still sits with me. Like I still feel like it's all going to fall apart at any second, like it used to, but you know, it's not, but it can, oh, a business, it can always be out of business in 30 days. You're, you know, 90 days, you can always be out of business. So don't think that the wrong way, but I've learned that I really need to understand what my job is. And at the end of the day, now my job is to be a coach, is to really understand how to put my people in the right position and make them be the best they could ever be.

13:18Matt DuBoise:That's hard, but I'll be honest with you, it's my favorite job I've ever had. I absolutely love being a coach. And it's also probably because it is the hardest job in the world is managing people.

13:26UpFlip Podcast Host:Oh yeah, that's actually the stage of growth my company's at. So we just hired like a full-time salesperson recently. And it's like, I'm having to like evolve and like change that hat from like being the one that actually runs all of our sales calls. So like now I need to coach them and like spend the amount of time that I did actually in the sales calls on like actually coaching them to equip them. It's a hard hat and like being able to like identify you need to evolve. That's a hard thing to do and be able to actually do it. One of the trickiest things I've had to like do as a business owner so far.

13:53Matt DuBoise:Yeah, 100%. You got to learn to let go and trust. You got to if you want to grow. You got to constantly ask yourself, what is your long-term dream and what do you got to do to get there? and that is also part of that cycle of those problems that never ends. What happens is as you become wiser, you learn like, oh, it's time for me to change what I'm doing. It's time for me to let go where you don't spend so much time and energy fighting a fight that is not meant to be fought hard and it's almost impossible, but it's actually part

14:18UpFlip Podcast Host:of the growing pains. There's a reason. I don't know the exact set off my head, but it's like however many S &P companies there are now, like only like very few actually have like their original founder, like Mark Zuckerberg's obviously one of them. obviously Jensen from Navidia is one of them, but like there's a very small percentage. I think it comes back to like not being able to like evolve and like not be able to take it to like the next wave of growth there.

14:40Matt DuBoise:You know, one of my favorite ones is Steve Jobs. I love Steve Jobs. I have a Steve Jobs poster here. Yep, and I can relate to him so much. I wish I had the opportunity to meet him, but it makes sense. You have to be a little nutty and be able to take the risks that a true founder is willing to take, but you have a vision. And one of the things I've learned, and I still fight this every single day, And thank God I'm learning not to tolerate it too much. But I have learned when people start to tell me I'm wrong or I'm crazy, and 99 % of people are going to tell me I'm wrong, I'm crazy. That's when I found out I'm on the right path.